Ventura barber is making it work before the crack of dawn

Squeezing in hair appointments can be tough, but one barber is making it work before the crack of dawn.

It’s almost 3 a.m. and Tomahawk Barbershop is opening at a time when bars are closing.

It’s awfully early to get a haircut but Randy Reyes’ appointment book is full.

“I thought he was playing around I saw a text, ‘OK, you sure in the morning?’, ‘Yeah in the morning,’ I was like, ‘OK let’s do it,'” Reyes said.

It’s like taking a redeye flight.

“This guy is good, you know, honestly, for him I’d get up anytime,” said Pablo Flores, one of the clients at the barbershop early one morning.

Clients in Reyes’ chair say their loved ones don’t always believe them at first when they say they’re going to get a shave and cut in the wee hours of the morning.

“I told my mom she was like, ‘You got to get up at 4 a.m. to get a haircut? It’s the ony spot he has,” Flores said.

Girlfriends sometime want proof.

“I got three mouths to feed, I’d better be busy,” Reyes says with a laugh.

Thanks to word of mouth, Reyes is in demand, so he started coming in earlier and earlier to squeeze people in for a trim.

Some customers are early risers, others stay up all night.

Nodding off could be dangerous is Reyes is using a razor, but it has happened during cuts.

“After you’re done — you can wake up now.”

Now they wouldn’t want to visit their barber any other time of day.

“It’s nice, quiet and cool. I like it,” Flores said.

They like the peace and quiet and the old school feeling they get at the barbershop.

Reyes doesn’t own the Tomahawk Shop, he just rents his chair

Other chairs in the establishment have their own stories to tell, with some chairs dating all the way back to the 1800s.

Reyes is a good listener, too.

“The chair is like a magnet for the truth,” Reyes says.

“Time will hear heartbreak, hang tough,” he tells a client.

He got his start at Uncle Al Barber shop when he was just a boy.

“My dad called him Uncle Al and I legit thought he was my uncle for the longest time… i used to help him sweep up and I got the idea that this is what i wanted to do.”

Clients like learning the history of the barber poll.

The red ribbon represents bloodletting.

“One stop shopping back in the day. White is stitching, blue the veins, when it spins it represents the circulatory system.”

Reyes would like to own his own shop someday. And if his clients have their way it will be open all night and all day.